at an end. Not only had one of the most "solemn
providences" known within the memory of the neighborhood fallen out at
her door,--not only had the most interesting funeral that had occurred
for three or four years taken place in her parlor, but she was still
further to be distinguished in having the minister to tea after the
performances were all over. To this end she had risen early, and taken
down her best china tea-cups, which had been marked with her and her
husband's joint initials in Canton, and which only came forth on high
and solemn occasions. In view of this probable distinction, on Saturday,
immediately after the discovery of the calamity, Mrs. Kittridge had
found time to rush to her kitchen, and make up a loaf of pound-cake and
some doughnuts, that the great occasion which she foresaw might not find
her below her reputation as a forehanded housewife.

It was a fine golden hour when the minister and funeral train turned
away from the grave. Unlike other funerals, there was no draught on the
sympathies in favor of mourners--no wife, or husband, or parent, left a
heart in that grave; and so when the rites were all over, they turned
with the more cheerfulness back into life, from the contrast of its
freshness with those shadows into which, for the hour, they had been
gazing.

The Rev. Theophilus Sewell was one of the few ministers who preserved
the costume of a former generation, with something of that imposing
dignity with which, in earlier times, the habits of the clergy were
invested. He was tall and majestic in stature, and carried to advantage
the powdered wig and three-cornered hat, the broad-skirted coat,
knee-breeches, high shoes, and plated buckles of the ancient costume.
There was just a sufficient degree of the formality of olden times to
give a certain quaintness to all he said and did. He was a man of a
considerable degree of talent, force, and originality, and in fact had
been held in his day to be one of the most promising graduates of
Harvard University. But, being a good man, he had proposed to himself no
higher ambition than to succeed to the pulpit of his father in
Harpswell.

His parish included not only a somewhat scattered seafaring population
on the mainland, but also the care of several islands. Like many other
of the New England clergy of those times, he united in himself numerous
different offices for the benefit of the people whom he served. As there
was neither lawyer nor physicia